GRID 2 Review

AdministratorStaff

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. I never expected Grid 2 to be a mammoth disappointment. In fact, it was quite the opposite.

Codemasters is a publisher I fully trust to be able to release solid racing games, year after year. Sure, Formula One 2012 had a few AI problems in heavy traffic, and DiRT Showdown was “baby’s first racing game”, but let’s be real here, when has Codemasters ever put out a game that failed to live up to even half of its hype?

I was hoping I’d never find out the answer to that question, but now I know for sure. Grid 2 is a radical, over-simplified departure from everything that made the original Grid a fantastic arcade racer, and virtually none of the design choices should have made it past early brainstorming sessions. While the game itself is quite polished for what it is, and the driving model is a fantastic balance between approachable and intuitive, the game constantly fails to impress during key moments, and is only a mere shadow of what it could have been.

In preparation for the release of Grid 2, we here at RaceDepartment took a refreshed look at the original Grid, released all the way back in 2008. Despite lacking a robust physics engine, Grid was a solid bite-sized compilation of the world of auto racing, featuring challenging AI and an expansive career mode that held up even to today’s standards. And throughout this entire console generation, I’ve been playing Codemasters racing games as a genuine fan, always impressed by the sheer amount of detail put into the Dirt and F1 series in the past few years, often buying new titles right at launch, and never being disappointed. I’ll admit that I wasn’t an early Grid adopter, not by a longshot, but after seeing how much effort was spent turning the Dirt and F1 games into must-own console racers, I couldn’t help but get excited for the inevitable release of Grid 2, where everything that Codemasters had learned over the years would get rolled into one awesome package, showcasing the very best of what a console racer could and should be.

I probably shouldn’t have bought into the hype. I should have taken the lack of cockpit view as a subtle warning; that maybe it would open the flood gates for other bad design choices to make their way into the game. But I refused to believe that Codemasters could make a full-priced racing game that I wouldn’t enjoy playing. Even Dirt Showdown, a game meant for the most casual of racing fans, kept me entertained long enough to see the end credits roll. I refused to believe, in the weeks leading up to launch, that Grid 2 would be anything other than the greatest console racer of this generation.

Boy was I wrong.

A sequel to Grid should have been better than this. The menus are lifeless, the car selection merely acceptable, and the locations forgettable. Career mode’s premise makes you cringe more often than not, shoehorning in unnecessary social media elements at every turn that become annoying within minutes. It’s a game that holds your hand from beginning to end, never helping you to become a better pretend race car driver or rewarding you for your efforts along the way. The few chances the game had to impress me; it would instead fail spectacularly, with unexciting “new” features, and a lack of any resemblance to the wonderful 2008 title it was trying to improve upon. The game is not broken by any means, there are no embarrassing bugs or glitches to report, but Grid 2 is totally uninspired and the distinct lack of passion makes me wonder if this is just a temporary mis-step for Codemasters, or a sign of things to come.

Grid 2 starts off with a bang and immediately throws you into an old Ford Mustang, tasked with running two laps around one of the game’s downtown Chicago tracks. The visual quality is simply stunning; never has an urban environment looked more alive than it has in Grid 2. Thousands of fully-rendered spectators line the streets, each with their own individual cheering animations, and the temporary street circuit is transformed into a mass display of car culture. Your initial laps of the tutorial race aren’t spent figuring out the controls, but rather gawking at how much detail Codemasters put into the environment. If this was the reason why cockpit view was sacrificed, the results are easy to see. It’s very hard to impress me with graphics in 2013, but Codemasters wins this battle hands down. Squirrels run across the track, helicopters fly beside you, it all just looks awesome in motion. That is, when the framerate cooperates. I wouldn’t say Codemasters built an unoptimized game, but slowdown does occur here and there, and any attempts to fiddle with graphics settings to improve framerate yielded no results. And unfortunately, Codemasters still relies on heavy HDR and bloom effects, making the game look pretty in screenshots, but a bizarre moving oil painting while in motion. The yellowish tint from the original Grid is gone, replaced by a more natural greyish filter, but it still looks like Michael Bay: The Video game.

The tutorial race ends, and you’re treated to a flurry of cutscenes featuring, of all things, social media posts. Now, I understand the importance of social media as a marketing tool in today’s world, but Grid 2’s reliance on real and fictional versions of facebook, Twitter, YouTube, ESPN, and generic internet message boards to convey what little story exists in career mode, is beyond awful. After every race, your “fan count” slowly rises. After every championship, you’re shown a screencap of being featured in some YouTube video with a million views, or on the front page of ESPN.com. Fellow AI competitors talk trash to you by posting on your “wall.” You pick and choose events to enter with the game’s bastardized version of Internet Explorer, and invites to new events come through a simplified E-Mail system. The YouTube button in Dirt 3 was slightly overboard, with the announcer begging you to upload clips after each race, but Grid 2 shoehorning fictional social media sites into as many areas as possible, and using it as a primary way to tell the “story” makes you question whether Codemasters really grasps the concept of social media in the first place. You can’t actually interact with any of these fictional web sites either, so your mentor will just randomly mention that another driver was talking trash about you on your wall, or that you have a big twitter following and…well… that’s it. It’s just cringe-worthy, no other way to say it.

Career mode continues on, and you’re sent to test the Mustang at Indianapolis. This is where you actually get to test out the brand new driving physics Codemasters has spent the last little bit working on, and I’m happy to report that these may be the best arcade racer physics ever. Driving physics were a bit of a low point in the original Grid, but Codemasters radical new concept of a “one-size-fits-all” driving model works flawlessly in execution. Gone are the days of fiddling with assists and differing levels of traction control, Grid 2 offers an approachable handling model that is both easy to learn and hard to master. Cars feel genuinely connected to the road, are more than manageable with an Xbox 360 controller, and respond well to proper racing tactics. You can be a total noob and throw the car into the corner with little regard for braking points and racing lines, and still remain somewhat competitive, but the car will perform at its peak when you attempt to drive in a realistic fashion. Body roll and weight transfer is adequately modeled and is advantageous to understand, yet you won’t be smacking the wall if you’re a few feet off the optimal braking point. Running alternate lines to make a daring pass is a legitimate option, meaning racing can get pretty hectic at times. Every car also retains their own trademark handling characteristics, with muscle cars obviously being out maneuvered by the lighter JDM and European cars in the game. It’s a driving model that works incredibly well, and is easily the best part about Grid 2.

The game built around that driving model, sadly, leaves a lot to be desired.

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I’m a firm believer of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy, and Grid 2’s drastic movement away from the traditional auto racing world of the original was a terribly bad mistake on Codemasters part.

Unlike the original, Career Mode in Grid 2 is all about already being the best driver in the world, and helping a guy named Patrick Callahan start up his brand new “World Series Racing” sanctioning body. The whole premise just doesn’t work, and suffers from basic suspension of disbelief issues. First of all, for an upstart racing league, why are there a billion people along the side of the track to watch a bunch of hatchbacks race, when even NASCAR is struggling to fill grandstands to capacity in real life? Why are AI drivers talking trash to me about being a “scrub” when it’s established early on in the game that I’m already the best driver in the world? How are we getting permission to close off downtown Paris for a three lap econo-box race if we only have 20,000 facebook followers? It all just doesn’t make much sense, and you can continue to poke holes in the plot as you carry on through career.

And instead of being able to explore the massive event list at your leisure like the original Grid, Grid 2’s “Road to the WSR” is a linear path of running in races against different “clubs” that you’re attempting to “recruit” for the WSR season, and then physically racing the WSR season in more linear events that you’re expected to win. If you don’t buy into this whole concept right off the bat, the game makes no effort to explain to you why this is all such a big deal. It is entirely possible to just blaze through Grid 2’s career mode by mashing the “A” button through the social media cutscenes and winning races. The game never promised me something more exciting around the next corner, to the point where I just flat out got bored of career mode and didn’t bother continuing onto the fourth and fifth seasons. I expected more out of a racing game in 2013 than to be given a list of events to complete, while a generic narrator told me how cool the previous race was.

As a game, the natural progression arc, the “rags-to-riches” portion of career mode, doesn’t even exist. Your “fan count”, Grid 2’s version of XP, is utterly meaningless, as events are unlocked in a linear format after you complete each one. New cars and tracks are simply gifted to you every other race, and the concept of money and sponsorship is nowhere to be seen. You can still plaster stickers all over your car and customize your paint scheme, but any feature that required you to THINK in the original Grid has been removed. You’re never making choices that affect how career progresses, you’re never challenged to play on a harder difficulty for a better reward, you’re never taught how to be a better pretend race car driver, and there is no motivation to continue onto the higher levels.

The game also doesn’t let you completely turn off the flashback feature either, a staple of Codemasters games, so any big hit with another car or concrete barrier triggers the word “FLASHBACK” to pop up on screen for a period of time, which is going to annoy anyone who doesn’t completely suck at racing games .This kind of hand-holding continues throughout the entire game, Patrick Callahan always reminds you how much of a special snowflake you are after each race, and career mode boils down to “here are some races for you to complete,” until it just kind of ends in a bunch of live-action ESPN segments filmed in standard definition. It’s just too simplified and dumbed down for any real racing fan to enjoy playing through.

I don’t understand why there was a need to move away from the concept of Grid’s “world of motorsport” career mode. I miss being able to carve my own path through the three different regions, buying and selling cars, and racing in the events I wanted to race in. The generic set of events that you complete, one after the other, just gets old and tiresome, and for Grid 2 to take such a lazy, simplified approach to the singleplayer mode is extremely disappointing.

Then there are the real stars of the show, the cars and the tracks they race on. Fans of the original Grid are going to be immensely let down, one way or another, because Grid 2’s content list is yet another radical departure from the original. Whereas the first Grid title featured a multitude of street cars and purpose built race cars, Grid 2’s carlist includes mostly road-going cars, with a few purpose built race cars making up the highest of the four car tiers. I’m not entirely upset at the decision to include 90% road-legal cars, as it’s honestly a good mix and there will be a ton of manufacturer rivalries online, but it turns the game into Project Gotham Racing 2013 instead of a true sequel to Grid. If you remember the “Pro Tuned” class from Grid, that is more or less the entire game in Grid 2, save for a few GT3 cars and Supercars at the very end of the game. I personally think the road cars magnify how much the physics have been changed this time around, as you can’t drive like a complete retard with them anymore, but there was really no need to remove many of the purpose-built race cars, as they had a huge following in the original game.

The Project Gotham Racing vibe carries over to the track selection as well, with city courses making up much of the track selection this time around. One of my favorite parts about the original game were the creative street circuit layouts through places like San Francisco and Long Beach, but this creativity is nowhere to be found in Grid 2. The same passion that went into creating the California Highway track you’ve undoubtedly seen previewed ten different times in official Codemasters trailers hasn’t carried over to the other new environments, as Barcelona, Paris, Dubai, and Chicago are mostly forgettable. Yes, they all look fantastic, but none of the layouts are all that memorable, and seemed to have been designed according to how many scenic views you’ll pass, instead of what makes a good racing layout. Passing zones are rare, certain sections just don’t flow well and cause problems in heavy traffic, and a distinct lack of landmarks for braking and turn-in points means experienced racing gamers will have a few issues figuring out the ideal racing line. That isn’t to say all tracks in Grid 2 are bad, the point-to-point tracks in Hong Kong, California, and Japan are all nicely done, with the elevation changes in Asia providing a decent challenge and really forcing you to try different lines to avoid skidding off the track. I also particularly liked one of the Miami layouts early on in the game, as the curb hopping required for a fast lap managed to show off the new driving physics quite well. If anything, the weakest point in the track selection would be the purpose-built race facilities Codemasters included this time around. The Red Bull Ring, Algarve, Abu Dhabi, and Indianapolis just aren’t all that exciting compared to Spa, the Nurburgring, and Le Mans in the last game.

You’ve still got a multitude of race types to mess around with though, and this might save Grid 2 in the long run, for me anyways. I’m a big fan of how any car can be used on any track in Grid 2, something that is going to keep me hotlapping well past the game’s expiry date. You’ve got your standard circuit races, point-to-point races, drift events (which actually take skill now), knockout events, and time trials, which is more than enough for any serious racing game. In Grid 2, the big new addition is “LiveRoutes”, where the track dynamically changes at random, and it’s more about survival than who can memorize the track and be the fastest. I was skeptical of this technology when it was first announced, and after giving it a few tries, I had every right to be. LiveRoutes just doesn’t work in a racing game. The mode promises a dynamically changing track that keeps drivers on their toes, but in reality, the cities aren’t big enough for this kind of technology to be all that impressive or even exciting. And again, it caused suspension of disbelief issues and even framerate drops while the game presumably generated the next few corners of the track. How were grandstands and thousands of spectators suddenly appearing on the left side of the track, when I had just passed them on the right side of the track during the previous lap? How did we just race through an intersection that had a car show taking place in it not twenty seconds earlier? With the lack of any sort of navigational aid during these LiveRoutes races, and turns coming out of nowhere, guess how much fun these races are? I can see these being kind of fun online right the right group of people, but offline, more often than not, I was going down the same three streets and taking the same five turns over and over again until the race ended, with the AI lagging behind, simply unable to comprehend a dynamically changing track layout.

Speaking of the AI, there is some serious sorcery going on behind the scenes in Grid 2. I’m all for catch-up AI, as sometimes you’re just that good at racing games and need an artificial challenge, but throughout Grid 2’s career mode, I found myself switching between “Normal” and “Very Hard” on almost every race. On some tracks, the AI is embarrassing on the highest difficulty, and on others, they are god-like on “Normal.” On the Red Bull Ring, they nail every apex and fly off into the distance, yet on the California Highway, they can barely keep the car on the road and brake for even the slightest bends. I’ve seen AI cars struggle to complete a lap on Normal, only to go into a corner full-lock and shoot by me at the speed of sound. On Very Hard, I’ve ran down drivers who were driving like some sort of Huttu/Senna cyborg, only to see them turn into Yuji Ide upon passing them, and drop like a rock through the field. One of my favorite things about the first Grid was how hard the AI raced you, and here, it’s wildly inconsistent. You’ll spend three laps reeling someone in, and once you get by, they literally lock up the brakes and you’ll never see them again. On one of the early races in Miami, I was side by side with a guy coming to the line, and a hundred feet before the finish, he slammed on his brakes for no apparent reason, giving me the win. And during Time Trial events in career mode, what’s essentially Open Qualifying, the times appearing on the leaderboard from AI drivers had no resemblance to what they were doing on-track. I wasn’t even trying to break the game, this kind of crap was happening all around me and it was hard not to notice. Please Codemasters, leave the scripted gameplay events and hand holding to the Call of Duty crowd, none of this stuff has any place on a virtual race track.

Of course, you can choose to skip all of that and head to Multiplayer right away, as nothing in your single player account has any relation to the multiplayer side of the game.

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I still can’t decide whether I like Grid 2’s multiplayer aspect, or whether it’s just too much for a moderately-sized audience. Grid 2’s multiplayer attempts to turn the game into an MMO of sorts, where you level up and earn money from races to buy and upgrade cars in your garage. The concept isn’t very difficult to understand, and it borrows a lot of elements from the original Grid’s singleplayer, but only time will tell how well this sort of thing works out in the long run. The netcode is vastly improved from the original and the racing can be quite good with drivers of a similar skill level, but with so much of multiplayer focused on having a big friends list to compete for leaderboard times, as well as racing in full fields to level up in a timely manner, it’s entirely possible that if the game doesn’t gain a large audience at launch, levelling up and racing in multiplayer will be more of a chore than anything. This won’t be much of an issue for people with large groups of friends or who run in weekly racing clubs, but for the lone wolves looking to progress through online alone, this could be the number one obstacle for Grid 2’s staying power. With the glorious Dirt 3 barely able to fill 8 player lobbies a week after launch, multiplayer could very well be a failed experiment. Another unknown is whether DLC will be allowed online, as in the original Grid, the content from both DLC packs couldn’t be used unless everyone in the room had them installed.

Codemasters has also taken a wild approach to DLC, giving us several trailers and even a detailed monthly DLC plan, long before the game’s release. To other console racing fans, most notably avid Forza players, this is nothing new, until you see what’s been included in the upcoming DLC. Earlier on I noted that the car list lacks many purpose built race cars, and it seems the majority of them will be offered as DLC, all the way until October of 2013. I understand DLC is here to stay, but cutting the top tiers of the car roster in half and offering the most-desired cars as “premium content” that you’ll have to pay for, after dropping $60 on a brand new game, is a really shady move, yet another bad design choice and a sign that Codemasters has possibly lost touch with the people playing their games.

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And I think that’s the main problem with Grid 2, the one thing keeping it from being a truly great racer: bad design choices. I can’t really fault Grid 2 for being a bad game in the traditional sense; it plays well and looks spectacular, but it seems as if Codemasters has had a radical change in staff, as Grid 2 is an immense departure from the original and rarely impressed me in the ways the original did. Most of the new features, such as LiveRoutes, or the restructured career mode, are pretty much the opposite of what people who play racing games want, and some, such as the over-saturation of social media cutscenes, have no place in a racing game to begin with. The lack of cockpit view doesn’t hurt the game, but it definitely opened the door for more lousy design choices, as career mode is a chore to play through, and very rarely does the game challenge you to be a better virtual race car driver. The opportunity for Codemasters to release one final awesome racing game on this console generation has been missed, as Grid 2 is unexciting and entirely forgettable, designed by a team of people who have seemingly never played a racing game before and are totally unsure of what features can make a racing game FUN past the initial few laps.6/10

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Premium Member

Thanks for the review. It's so sad how Codies racers have slowly gone downhill over recent years.
I had already decided to skip this after the whole 'no cockpit' fiasco but it's a shame that they believe adding the whole social media stuff will sell more games, because it wont. It just alienates their core customers.
I think I remember them saying that removing the cockpit view would only affect approx 5% of their customers. Personally I think it's higher but even so, I don't know many companies that would deliberately alienate any percentage of their dead cert customers.

Ryder25

Nice review! I COMPLETELY agree with you, Austin. I'm most disappointed by the singleplayer storyline; it is just horrible, and linear like you said. I was hoping they would expand on the team management, and include more real life motorsports this time around, but instead they've done the complete opposite. Everything else you said was right on the money too. I'd give the game a 7 because it is average, although it feels worse because it did not live up to my expectations.

Grid 2 is an immense departure from the original and rarely impressed me in the ways the original did. Most of the new features, such as LiveRoutes, or the restructured career mode, are pretty much the opposite of what people who play racing games want...

Staff Emeritus | Engineer at Manor RacingPremium Member

I hope Codies to FAIL big time... Maybe they would reconsider this "fast food garbage for stupids" but people are like sheep these day, so it won't happens. I gave up Codies for a long time now (skipping all the Race drivers, dirt, Grid, F1...) and never regretted it one bit!

Premium Member

Good review! Preloading GRID 2 now, will try it and give opinions. At least they have fixed the driving physics - I frankly hate F1 2012's physics sometimes, when the back end comes around for no apparent reason.

Disappointed that it's such a far cry from the original GRID and Race Driver series - those are the games which propelled me into sim racing originally! :/

WereslothStaffPremium Member

Premium Member

Great review, thanks for putting so much effort into it. Please do post it in the official CodeMasters GRID 2 forums where it will get a lot of attention from the developers themselves as well.

I'm the GRID 2 moderator here at RD, but luckily I won't let that influence my opinion about the game. Needless to say we all expected a lot more from GRID 2, especially in regards to singleplayer. It's normal that a sequel is often not as good as the highly praised original, but in this case it's more extreme.

But, before I end this, the multiplayer side of things will definitely still provide plenty of racing action for everyone. I assume that the majority of people on RD don't care about singleplayer, but most of us are looking for fun multiplayer races. So if you have the game, pay a visit to the GRID 2 Racing Club once preperations are fully completed (should be about a week from now). I'm sure we can all have a fun night with this game regardless of the step back in comparison to the original!

EDIT: Someone already linked to this review on the CM forums, you don't need to post it there anymore

Grid 2 is an immense departure from the original and rarely impressed me in the ways the original did. Most of the new features, such as LiveRoutes, or the restructured career mode, are pretty much the opposite of what people who play racing games want...

very detailed and comprehensive write up, good job. not my kind of game, though. liked playing the original race driver series and even before that the toca games. but that was before online gaming came along. ever since, AI has lost all of its appeal for me.

Premium Member

I read this bit...
"I never expected Grid 2 to be a mammoth disappointment. In fact, it was quite the opposite"
...as suggesting that "It wasn't a mammoth disappointment - it was the opposite".lol Afterwards, I read on and on and kudos for writing such a comprehensive review. You will have saved a lot of people a lot of money. I sense a lot of people will have bought this because they loved the original.For me, I never had GRID so as soon as I heard this had no cockpit view, I was never in for it. Also, based on the f1 2011 update to 2012 and Dirt 3 - Dirt Showdown, I sense that Codemasters are going for quick buck over Outstanding quality.
It might be just me, maybe I'm being spoilt, but I see no reason for anyone to buy this game. I mean, how many would buy a game for the menu bars? There's so much choice now - most games look good, have lots of cars, offer credits, road tracks, circuit tracks. This list goes on. I guess I don't get the difference between driving an arcade game like forza horizon, need for speed, or this crud. If people don't buy it, quality goes up or businesses go bust. I hope a minority bought it and they enjoy it. Hate to see people robbed.

Thank you for this review, I too can not believe the direction codemasters has taken with these games, it seems they are focused on trying to win over the tweens instead of improving the gameplay for hardcore racing fans, I loved Colin Mcrae's WRC game, Dirt was decent even had a desert route that was very close to the actual track, Grid was awesome (not with assist on) had some great races with other gamers who raced (not slam into you) Dirt 2 was very nice (but did fall a tad short of my expectations)but was good enough to get some of my friends who didn't race to buy it and enjoy it alot, Then the crash and burn started with Dirt 3, Dirt Showdown (what a joke) and I keep telling myself just wait for Grid 2, just hang in there, codemasters will come through (even if it was the same as Grid with more cars and tracks, I would have be ecstatic) So Sad, well at least I found this site, looks like this is where true racing lovers come to discuss all things virtual, maybe a new company will take over where codemasters slid off the road and slamed into the wall (but maybe they enjoy wall riding like all the other children.....Dirt 2)

Premium Member

Great review, thanks for saving me some cash.
I agree with the other comments here, Grid was a quality all round game, but alas Codies have lost the plot in recent years in my book. Seems bling and virtual eye candy has become the staple reasoning behind Codies releases instead of designing realistic racing scenarios that give the gamer some bang for their buck, the lack of cockpit view in any racing title is a regrettable decision, and it will cost Codies a large chunk of their return dollars.

I made the mistake of buying this game today, wish I had read your review first. This game is total garbage, please do not buy it, the past codemasters racing games have been pretty good (ignoring dirt showdown), this is basically the worst driving game around.... If you like arcade racers, buy something else, if you like sim racers, buy something else.... if you are in the 1% that can't make up your mind then maybe this game is ok but instead, do yourselves a favor and decide which style you like and save your money.